In 1717 he allied himself with _le Nouveau Mercure_, a paper devoted to the interests of the _Modernes_ as against those of the _Anciens_. This quarrel over the comparative merits of the ancient and modern writers, begun in the first half of the seventeenth century with the abbe de Bois- Robert, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, and later Perrault, Fontenelle, La Motte, and others ranged on the side of the latter, while Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Rollin, Mme. Dacier, and followers strenuously upheld the honor of antiquity, had dragged on through the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, until apparently the last word had been said by Mme. Dacier in her _Preface a la traduction de l'Odyssee_ (1716). Marivaux, however, by turn of mind and training a modern, and ever the champion of his friend La Motte, and, perhaps more to avenge him for the "grosses paroles de Mme. Dacier"[33] than to depreciate _le divin Homere_ (whom he made a point of always mentioning in that way), would not let the matter rest, and, in 1717, composed a burlesque poem entitled _l'Iliade ravestie_. Had he been familiar with the Greek language, he might never have committed this piece of literary impudence, but he knew Homer only through La Motte's reduction of the Iliad, which in turn was based upon Mme. Dacier's translation. If his object was to overthrow the great Greek poet, it must have been a bitter disappointment to Marivaux to see that his burlesque passed almost unnoticed by his contemporaries and was soon forgotten. The same year he wrote a _Telemaque travesti_, a parody on the masterpiece of Fenelon. This work was not published until 1736, when it was received with such disapprobation that he hastened to disavow its authorship.[34]